Sniper Elite: Resistance review

Nazis are pretty much the definitive bad guys. They’re perfect videogame fodder because you never have to feel bad about punching, shooting or exploding them. And for sad real world reasons, it’s never felt more cathartic to do so—so Sniper Elite: Resistance couldn’t have come along at a better time. Channelling the spirit of a classic WW2 movie, there’s daring romps and blockbuster beats aplenty.

Sniper Elite: Resistance is the first spin off for the Sniper Elite series that doesn’t have you fighting zombies, and it’s clearly hoping to capture some of the magic of 2022’s Sniper Elite 5. You play as new recruit to the series Harry Hawker, fighting arm in arm with several of the French Resistance characters from Sniper Elite 5 and romping around the countryside. It feels a lot like playing an expansion pack for Sniper Elite 5, with familiar enemy behaviours, mechanics and tools. But that’s no bad thing—Sniper Elite 5 was a huge step up in quality, and Resistance feels like half a step forward again, full of excellent playgrounds for the series’ trademark mix of long-range sniping and guerilla warfare.

There are just seven main missions, but they’re all huge and took me about 90 minutes to play through. The French locales are varied, inviting you to crouchwalk your way through farms, chateaus, secret bases, and more. Importantly, each of the levels feels distinct, with a good mix of tight corridors, interesting geometry to stealth your way through and, of course, some perfect viewpoints for sniping.

The exploration age

(Image credit: Rebellion Developments)

Sniper Elite 5 paid homage to Hitman somewhat, and here that admiration is even more obvious from the wide open levels and greater focus on player freedom and exploration. The first run through a level is often just poking and prodding at the different systems to see what’s possible, what routes you can skulk your way through the easiest, and what vantage points you prefer.

It does mean that actually achieving your goals on that first run can be tricky. In one level, I encountered a multi-storey hotel—the map told me that the objective was somewhere inside, but not where it was. I had to explore five floors before I found what I was looking for, a 30 minute search that left the place a graveyard.

Many of these objectives are bombastic affairs—sabotaging dams, blowing up trains, that sort of thing—but there are also a few kill objectives that play out like a riff on the Hitman series directly. You can always simply shoot your target in the head, but if you kill them with the specific method requested you’ll unlock a brand new weapon for your troubles.

I enjoyed the extra challenge. Killing with a bullet is easy in Sniper Elite: Resistance, but doing the deed with poisoned wine or an explosive piece of coal? That’s much tougher, and often involves passing up on several different tempting opportunities as you sneak around behind them setting things in motion.

Old school stealth

(Image credit: Rebellion Developments)

Violence is easy, but stealth is much more challenging, demanding patience and plenty of information gathering. A lot of recent stealth games just chuck ultramodern gadgets or magical devices into the mix to make things easier, and I’ve got to admit I’ve been spoiled by them. Here, the best gadget at your disposal is often a silenced pistol, or even just a patch of mud to go prone in.

You do still have a few tricks up your sleeve, though. I’ve gotten the most use out of the variety of explosives you can use to booby trap bodies and walkways, but there are also lures to distract people, and even a little helmet on a stick that will distract (and mark) enemy snipers.

But it’s still pretty unforgiving. Once enemies are in “combat” mode, they pretty much stay that way until you kill them. As a result, once you’re seen things often devolve into awkward skirmishes or a tornado of violence depending on the level. It’s tough to disengage because of the crushing weight of enemies around you. And in addition to a numbers advantage, the troops you’re fighting are pretty formidable—once they’ve got you in their sights, they’ll fire at your last known position to keep you pinned down while others move up to flank you. Overconfidence or a bad position will quickly dump you out to a game over screen.

Overconfidence or a bad position will quickly dump you out to a game over screen.”

So, gathering information before everything goes sideways is your best hope of survival. Stalking enemies and tagging them with your binoculars allows you to track their movements for the rest of your mission, but also to find out more about them. Their equipment, sure, but it also turns out your binoculars are capable of detecting someone’s darkest secrets.

One of those soldiers might have plans to flee Germany to be with their partner, while another… has a pet rock. The equipment is useful, the secrets not so much, but these asides are well written and funny, a charming bit lifted from The Heart in Dishonored (where the Heart item told you such things). I don’t know why my binoculars can tell me someone’s deepest fears, but I’m okay with it.

Unfortunately, movement during these stealth sequences can feel imprecise at times, particularly when it comes to scaling ladders or crawling through vents. When it goes wrong it feels less like I’m controlling an elite sniper and more like I’m veering around a warzone on roller skates. It’s an occasional issue, but when you blow your cover because you got stuck on some invisible geometry or clipped into a wall, it grates.

Going ballistic

(Image credit: Rebellion Developments)

Still, when the stealth goes out the window you get to play with Sniper Elite: Resistance’s remarkably detailed ballistics. Bullets will punch through wood to hit anything behind it, and pretty much everything you can shoot is fully modelled too—externally and internally.

Sniper Elite’s killcam is one of the defining features of the franchise at this point. With almost every killing bullet fired, you get to see the damage done to the target via an x-ray view that shows bones breaking, muscles tearing and organs bursting. Rifle shots put on a spectacular and harrowing show, but this time you also get killcams for kills with your pistol or secondary weapon, and those are much less visually striking.

As I get older, I find watching the impact of your bullets on a human body doesn’t really spark joy. I don’t know if I want to see that my long-range shot took out several vertebrae, or blew someone’s jaw across the nearby countryside. Call me a prude, but these killcams slow gameplay down significantly, and mostly just make me squirm.

I do still get a kick out of the detailed biology on show though. At times it feels almost educational, when a target goes down in one shot rather than three and it turns out it’s because I accidentally put a round through their kidney.

(Image credit: Rebellion Developments)

You can also incapacitate enemies with limb shots and enemies will strive to save them, slowing themselves down as they hoist their injured colleague onto their back and try to get them to safety. You could use this for bait if you wanted. I often wanted.

My favourite trick, something that I loved in Metal Gear Solid 2 all the way back in 2001 and I’ve barely seen in games since, is that if you shoot a soldier in the arm, they’ll immediately drop their main gun and switch to a sidearm. In practice this doesn’t happen that often, but the first time I noticed it I let out a little squeak of joy.

Resistance’s weapons start off clumsy and your character can’t take many hits. Given that an alarm will often bring every enemy on the map into one big fight, the best way to progress is to wage a guerilla battle, evening the odds with each brutal firefight. I’d try to take out as many people as possible, hiding or trapping bodies ahead of the grand firefight that often accompanied me trying to do any big objective.

There’s a fairly dull skill system that will make you more survivable over time, but the real empowerment comes from both learning as a player and tinkering with your weapons. I quickly fell in love with the Modelle 1935 pistol, bolting a stock, silencer and long-range scope onto it, turning it into a pocket sized rifle.

Full scale invasion

(Image credit: Rebellion Developments)

Once you’re done with the campaign, extra modes offer more to do. Survival is just a horde mode where you try to protect your HQ from waves of enemies, Propaganda features small scenarios set in the maps you’ve already played but let you play as different characters and complete new challenges, and then there’s a player vs player multiplayer mode for sniping matches.

These are all fine, and a good way to eke more fun out of your time with Resistance, but the standout is Invasion, which first came into the series with Sniper Elite 5. This lets you drop into another player’s campaign as an Axis sniper to stalk and hunt them. Resistance, like many stealth games, is about learning patterns and systems and exploiting them, but when you are there as the sniper hunting them, you both have to do some more creative thinking.

I’ve baited the hero of their own campaign into hunting me only to have them stumble into a mine next to an explosive barrel that killed them instantly. I’ve had a tense Enemy At The Games-style standoff that went against my opponent because after they shot and incapacitated me, they were charged by my German allies and killed as I lay on the ground trying to patch myself up. It’s great fun playing a miniboss for someone else, and I can see myself revisiting this for as long as there are still games to invade.

Despite some frustrations, there’s only one major problem: new hero Harry Hawker.”

All in all there’s plenty to keep you occupied here, and despite some frustrations, there’s only one major problem: new hero Harry Hawker. He’s maybe my least favourite protagonist of any game from the last few years. I’ve always thought of Karl Fairburne, star of the main series, as a human-shaped blob of porridge, unburdened by anything remotely resembling charisma. Compared to Hawker however, Fairburne is George Clooney.

He feels like an awkward children’s TV presenter, constantly chipping in to tell me that long grass is itchy but good to hide in, or suggesting I might get spotted if I go this way. I think I might hate Harry Hawker, with all his overexplaining and the way he says things repeatedly with the exact same intonation during the same level. Hawker doesn’t seem to care, though, rattling through his canned lines like he’s getting paid per word and describing his blood as “motion lotion” for some reason.

But ignore Hawker—I try to— and Sniper Elite: Resistance is a solid stealth game that wears its influences on its sleeve but has plenty of its own tricks. It’s old fashioned, but I find it quite compelling that it’s a game that knows exactly what it wants to be. Sniper Elite has felt like the heir apparent to the stealth genre for a while now, and Resistance further solidifies that, a generous helping of sneaky action that’s only slightly less impressive because it’s retreading the same path Sniper Elite 5 already took in 2022.